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Zach Schnell, Student

App Design

Gmail 2.0 is gorgeous. It is an incredible step up from their previous attempt design wise. They utilize the increasingly-common side menu that can be accessed via a swipe to the right (or button press in the top left corner) and visually seems to appear from under the main inbox screen. The color scheme is great. The dark menu with white text is easy to read, and the inbox itself is easy on the eyes with a light font. And their details for showing updates – the multi-color animation and use of the top, black, information bar a la Twitter – are really great touches.

I have always appreciated Apple's native app because of its simplicity. It uses iOS's typical design and just works. Like Gmail, it features a new style of pull to refresh. The layout is intuitive as it should be. The menu structure is easy to pick up on, as is navigating through messages. Like with Dropbox, I am visually pleased by Apple's mail app because of its simplicity. It is true to iOS as far as its elements and scheme are concerned. They do not do anything new and noteworthy design wise, but it makes reading emails quick and intuitive.

While they both support multiple mail accounts, Google keeps all of their settings and management inapp versus Apple moving it all to Settings. I am sure this is to lessen the buttons and options in the Apple app, but I appreciate being able to perform all of my mail-related configurations within the Gmail app.

on iOS

Gmail does what it can. Apple will always have the advantage as long as its the native app, but Gmail utilizes as much as iOS as it can. It accesses contacts and sends push notifications just as I would expect of a native app. No clear winner in this respect, though it certainly helps to be native; whenever a new message is crafted from another app, the native mail client message maker appears, making users all the more accustomed to Apple's native client.

Gmails from Google

The main – and really only – problem I have had with Apple's mail app is that the only sent messages that appear are those sent from that mail app; when I send an email from Gmail on another device, it does not appear as sent mail on another device using Apple's mail client in the particular conversation flow in my inbox. Google's app, obviously, doesn't have this issue.

And Google wins as far as settings are concerned. They are in the position to offer more advanced configurations from the app. I can choose to use a different signature, enable a vacation responder, or report spam. These are small, but the point is that because Google is developing around their own platform, they have more room to offer more personal touches. Namely, their notifications. I have the native mail app check for updates as frequently as possible, but because inbound messages are to Google's servers, their app can push a notification the instant I get a new email, much like an immediate and responsive notification from Quora.

Oh, and the search has been great for me on Google's part. It searches everything relatively fast and does it with a single search box. The native app has four sections to search by: From, To, Subject, and All. While I always want to search "All," "From" is selected by default and it always takes me minutes of searching farther back in time for me to realize my mistake. Google wins here, and that is exactly what I expected given their search in browser.

It also wins as far as the priority functions. Apple lets you flag messages and now utilize a VIP inbox – which I have yet to use beyond testing – but Google brings the starring and my custom importance settings into the app, giving me options to view either. Google's been collecting data on what mail I find important for years, so the dedicated inbox is a really nice feature, and stands out more to me than Apple's VIP alternative.

Speed

The apps are quite similar in speed. Over a 3G connection on my 4S, both apps loaded interchangeably fast. They also both only fetch new information upon refresh rather than redownload everything, which is far more efficient. However, for what it's worth, the native app was a notably more responsive during my testing. While gestures were fluid for the most part, the Google app showed a bit of a lag in response for clicking and loading messages and details. The native app also seemed more responsive while switching views, such as between the inbox and a particular conversation, but again they both downloaded content rather quick.

One efficiency increaser for me in the native app are the double arrows in the top right corner that appear while reading messages that let you move to the previous and following message without revisiting the inbox.

... and this brings me to Efficiency

This, for me, ties back to the design of the app. One of the first things I noticed in the Google app is that there is only one fixed bar at the top when browsing the inbox versus Apple's two – one to show download progress/create new emails and the other to show your location inapp/offer an edit button. Google's approach is both cleaner and allows for more messages to appear on screen. I am sure this is even nicer on the iPhone 5, assuming the bar heights do not scale with the taller screen.

In the native app, there is a single "Edit" button in the top right corner from the inbox. From there, I can select various messages and Delete, Move, or Mark them. I can also change the Delete to an Archive button instead, but to do so, I have to modify options in the Settings app. While I like the simplicity, Google's plethora of options has its benefits. Checking a message to its left brings up the options bar in the bottom. From there, I can archive and delete, and there is an arrow to accomplish even more. I can move it to a folder or label it – which the native mail app makes into one – as I can mark it read or unread; the native app lets you do the same, but with one button rather than two, which makes more sense because if it's read, I'd only need to mark it unread, and vice versa. There are more options too, but I don't use them. Overall, I have happily made do with Apple's three button approach, and this approach is one or two clicks quicker for certain settings.

Google wins, though, in reading conversations. It has the benefit of pulling profile data, but more impressive is its structure: by default, the emails in an exchange are collapsed, and you can click on a single message to reveal just the text sent in that email. It doesn't load all of the previous messages every time unless you tell it to. I am sure this impacts speed for longer conversations as far as downloading is concerned, but furthermore it makes reading through exchanges much quicker.

That said, I cannot for the life of me figure out how to delete or move a single message in a conversation, but rather I must edit the whole exchange. In the native app, I can swipe to delete (or archive depending on how it's set up) or use the handy edit button to modify a couple messages. This has it's benefits for longer conversations, though is nothing pressing.